


Both Wear Red

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mistaken Identity, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 21:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9567575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Merlin keeps busy however he can.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Merlin.

He tried to keep himself busy. It was for the best.

Wood carving was nice. He liked thinking he was making his father proud. So he carved wood, no magic, just skill, whenever there was nothing else to do. He couldn't carry the results around with him forever, so he traded them away or gave them to wide-eyed children.

They liked the dragons best, but they liked the knights, too.

Someone taught him how to make a doll with a few scraps of cloth and a corn husk. He taught himself how to make a better one by carving wood and using a scrap of one of Guinevere's old dresses. He wouldn't have, for anyone else, but the girl hadn't said a word in months since her village burned, and he didn't think Guinevere would mind.

Each and every one was by hand until he got to a village where the children were dying of hunger and plague, and the sickness he could fix, but he couldn't draw food from thin air.

He could, however, use a spell to replicate the dragons in his sack and give them out to the wide eyed children. He could tell them stories while he healed them and quietly urged the crops to grow faster.

He stopped wandering eventually. He tried to settle down.

When he'd filled three rooms with toys, he loaded the sacks up and headed out.

"You're wearing red," a little girl informed him.

"I like red." It had been Camelot's color, after all.

"You have a beard."

"It's a good beard." Parents were a bit less jumpy about a kindly grandfather handing out toys for free than they were otherwise.

The girl sucked her thumb thoughtfully. "Are you Santa Claus?"

Merlin hesitated.

"Do I get cookies if I say yes?"


End file.
